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Bear with me. First a caveat, you cannot practically sterilize or disinfect most headphones. Not fully. The pads are most likely made of a non-smooth, semi-porous material, which means anything short of soaking is not going to fully disinfect. Even a 70% solution of alcohol needs to sit for approximately one minute to be considered effective as a disinfectant. Most recognized disinfectants have alcohol in them and the alternative chemicals are generally more corrosive or have other undesirable properties. It's not a good idea to claim that you are "disinfecting" something like headphones because you aren't.

The most commonly suggested and safest alternative is Lysol (type products) which uses a different active ingredient, that is also relatively safe. Most, if not all, formulations contain some kind of alcohol, but not as the primary ingredient.

But you have a secondary problem. Contact irritation. Anything you use runs some risk of causing a reaction in your visitors. Would you spray Lysol on a child's skin? I suggest this is a bigger practical problem than infection since the outer ear is not a major vector for pathogens but is vulnerable to irritation.

You might offer visitors a "soap" based wipe (or similar solution), i.e. baby wipes. These provide relatively effective "cleaning" with a low chance of causing your visitors any irritation. Provide these to the visitor and let them clean to their heart's content. They can use them on the headphones and on their ears after the fact if they wish. The downside is they don't necessarily evaporate rapidly. You might want to experiment with different types.

Almost anything you apply will degrade the headphone pads over time. Just wetting and drying repeatedly is degrading. Most good headphones have replaceable pads and you might want to acquire a small stockpile.

Hi there, 

We faced the same conundrum at Blithewold. It was exacerbated by the bad feelings the audio tours engendered in our docents. They called our tablet tour "Docent on a String". ouch. Also, none of the volunteers really wanted to be "cleaning" the earbuds. First we purchase a bunch of the little foam covers thinking that it would be easy to just replace them. Easy, yes. Tedious, also yes. Our next idea was to purchase a lot of very inexpensive wired earbuds, which we just let people take. But, that didn't really work for us either. Another unfortunate byproduct of using an audio tour with headphones, is that the silence in the house was very eerie. People wouldn't talk to our docents, or one another. In the end, we did away with the headphones altogether. We encouraged visitors to use their own earbuds or to go without them altogether and to keep their volume low. For the most part people have been very good about it. Very, very seldom do we need to ask someone to make an adjustment. 

Hope that helps,

Tree 

Bear with me. First a caveat, you cannot practically sterilize or disinfect most headphones. Not fully. The pads are most likely made of a non-smooth, semi-porous material, which means anything short of soaking is not going to fully disinfect. Even a 70% solution of alcohol needs to sit for approximately one minute to be considered effective as a disinfectant. Most recognized disinfectants have alcohol in them and the alternative chemicals are generally more corrosive or have other undesirable properties. It's not a good idea to claim that you are "disinfecting" something like headphones because you aren't.

The most commonly suggested and safest alternative is Lysol (type products) which uses a different active ingredient, that is also relatively safe. Most, if not all, formulations contain some kind of alcohol, but not as the primary ingredient.

But you have a secondary problem. Contact irritation. Anything you use runs some risk of causing a reaction in your visitors. Would you spray Lysol on a child's skin? I suggest this is a bigger practical problem than infection since the outer ear is not a major vector for pathogens but is vulnerable to irritation.

You might offer visitors a "soap" based wipe (or similar solution), i.e. baby wipes. These provide relatively effective "cleaning" with a low chance of causing your visitors any irritation. Provide these to the visitor and let them clean to their heart's content. They can use them on the headphones and on their ears after the fact if they wish. The downside is they don't necessarily evaporate rapidly. You might want to experiment with different types.

Almost anything you apply will degrade the headphone pads over time. Just wetting and drying repeatedly is degrading. Most good headphones have replaceable pads and you might want to acquire a small stockpile.

Bear with me. First a caveat, you cannot practically sterilize or disinfect most headphones. Not fully. The pads are most likely made of a non-smooth, semi-porous material, which means anything short of soaking is not going to fully disinfect. Even a 70% solution of alcohol needs to sit for approximately one minute to be considered effective as a disinfectant. Most recognized disinfectants have alcohol in them and the alternative chemicals are generally more corrosive or have other undesirable properties. It's not a good idea to claim that you are "disinfecting" something like headphones because you aren't.

The most commonly suggested and safest alternative is Lysol (type products) which uses a different active ingredient, that is also relatively safe. Most, if not all, formulations contain some kind of alcohol, but not as the primary ingredient.

But you have a secondary problem. Contact irritation. Anything you use runs some risk of causing a reaction in your visitors. Would you spray Lysol on a child's skin? I suggest this is a bigger practical problem than infection since the outer ear is not a major vector for pathogens but is vulnerable to irritation.

You might offer visitors a "soap" based wipe (or similar solution), i.e. baby wipes. These provide relatively effective "cleaning" with a low chance of causing your visitors any irritation. Provide these to the visitor and let them clean to their heart's content. They can use them on the headphones and on their ears after the fact if they wish. The downside is they don't necessarily evaporate rapidly. You might want to experiment with different types.

Almost anything you apply will degrade the headphone pads over time. Just wetting and drying repeatedly is degrading. Most good headphones have replaceable pads and you might want to acquire a small stockpile.